Exploring the
Nature of Fathers
A new book combines personal insights with the science of paternal potential
In a new book, James Rilling interweaves his personal experiences as a son, husband and dad with the latest scientific insights into fatherhood. The MIT Press published “Father Nature: The Science of Paternal Potential.”
“It’s about how and why human males evolved the capacity to be involved caregivers, how that care benefits their children, and the circumstances in which it is more common,” says Rilling, a professor in Emory University’s Department of Psychology and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “The intended audience is anyone who is, has or knows a father.”
"My academic life informed my personal life and vice versa as I wrote the book," Rilling says. "It was an interesting interplay." (Photo by Kay Hinton, Emory Photo/Video)
"My academic life informed my personal life and vice versa as I wrote the book," Rilling says. "It was an interesting interplay." (Photo by Kay Hinton, Emory Photo/Video)
Rilling explores the neural basis of human social cognition and behavior as the director of the Laboratory for Darwinian Neuroscience. Around the time of the birth of his first child, he realized that paternal caregiving was a neglected research topic and he decided to make it a focus of his lab.
He also began teaching an undergraduate course on fatherhood.
Rilling's son Toby, now 13, and daughter, Mia, 8, continue to inspire and inform his pioneering research on dads.
“I have often thought that [my daughter] was perfectly designed by natural selection to make me love her,” Rilling writes. “Her power over me is astounding. For example, she loves playing with her Barbie Dreamhouse, and I would probably list that dead last in terms of my favorite activities. Yet when she asks me to play it with her, I am powerless to say no. Indeed, I have dutifully committed to memory the names of all of Barbie’s sisters.”
In the following Q&A, Rilling discusses the current scientific understanding of fatherhood and some highlights from his book.
Rilling with his wife, Barbara, and their son, Toby, and daughter, Mia. (Photo by Kay Hinton, Emory Photo/Video)
Rilling with his wife, Barbara, and their son, Toby, and daughter, Mia. (Photo by Kay Hinton, Emory Photo/Video)
What is unique about your research?
I’m interested in trying to understand the hormonal and neurobiological changes that men experience when they become fathers, and how those changes may relate to whether men are more, or less, involved with their children. There are not many labs investigating that. The goal is to find ways to support fathers and to help improve the quality of caregiving that they deliver.
Paternal care is not obligate in the human species. The potential is there but it is not always realized. There is a lot of variation among fathers in terms of how involved they are with their children. And yet, we know that children who are raised by more positively engaged fathers tend to have better outcomes socially, behaviorally and, also, academically.
That doesn’t mean that a child cannot do well without an engaged father, only that the odds improve.
What are some of the more surprising findings on the biology of fathers?
The idea that, analogous to women, men experience biological changes that prepare them for their role as caregivers.
For example, for a long time people thought oxytocin was just a maternal hormone involved in mother-infant bonding. Emerging evidence suggests that it also promotes father-infant bonding.
Fathers with more oxytocin in their blood stimulate their infants more through activities like bouncing them up and down or poking them playfully to get their attention.
When fathers have more skin-to-skin contact with infants, that actually increases the fathers’ oxytocin levels. Studies have also found that after fathers are given oxytocin in a nasal spray they interact and play with their infants more.
How can society better support more positive engagement of fathers?
More women have entered the workforce and many new parents live far away from extended family members. And yet, the U.S. is the only high-income country whose government does not provide any paid maternity leave. We are a massive outlier in this area.
The U.S. government also does not offer paid paternity leave, unlike 47 other high-income countries around the world.
Paternity leave gives fathers more of an opportunity to forge a bond with an infant and to develop confidence as a parent. A lot of evidence shows that fathers who take paternity leave tend to continue being more involved fathers.
What part of writing the book did you enjoy the most?
It was fun researching and writing about parental caregiving in different species. The female velvet spider, for example, regurgitates her intestines to feed her young and then the babies also end up eating her. It’s crazy.
A remarkable example of paternal caregiving is the Emperor penguin. The dads incubate the eggs by forming these giant huddles in the Arctic during the winter when it’s minus 40 degrees. They do that for months while the mothers are off at sea. They can’t eat anything while incubating an egg so they lose a lot of their body weight.
Male titi monkeys are devoted fathers, carrying their infants on their backs almost constantly. (Getty Images)
Male titi monkeys are devoted fathers, carrying their infants on their backs almost constantly. (Getty Images)
Only about five percent of males in mammalian species are involved in raising their offspring. Titi monkeys of South America are especially interesting. The males carry their infants on their backs through the forest and only give them back to the mothers to nurse. As a result, the infants form stronger attachments to their fathers than to their mothers.
The lack of paternal care among our closest living primate relatives [chimpanzees and gorillas] suggests that it newly evolved during human evolution. Because human males have likely been provisioning their offspring throughout human evolution, paternal caregiving likely played an important role in allowing our large-brained species to multiply rapidly and spread across the globe.
What distinguishes human fathers as direct caregivers?
Fathers, mothers and other caregivers have overlapping roles. There are few roles that fathers play that cannot be played by others.
However, fathers often gravitate toward a couple of important roles. One is introducing a child to the world outside of the home and supervising their exploration of that world. They help kids understand that the novelty and unpredictability that they encounter is not always something they need to be afraid of but can be an opportunity for growth.
Fathers also seem to be very important in helping children learn to regulate emotions of anger and frustration and to correctly read the emotions of others. Many dads, for example, engage in rough-and-tumble play which helps children learn to empathize and interact more skillfully with others. If you’re having fun and want to keep playing you need to make sure your playmate is also having fun and isn’t getting upset.
How did your own parents influence you as a father?
My father and mother are both wonderful. My decision to become a father was largely due to all the great memories I have from my family life growing up. I wanted to try to recreate that.
As I’m parenting my children, I’m also aware that I’m influencing the way that they’re going to parent my grandchildren.
Do you have any advice for men who don’t have a positive father role model?
The basic, most important thing is to be warm and responsive to your child but also to set and to enforce appropriate limits. It’s called authoritative parenting. A lot of studies show that this style of parenting is tied to positive outcomes.
On a personal level, what are some of your biggest challenges as a father?
The most painful part of being a parent for me is when one of my children experiences a failure or feels socially excluded. I would give anything to take that pain for them. Having to watch your child experience those things is difficult.
Probably one of my biggest flaws as a father is sometimes having aspirations for them that they don’t share. I’ve learned that I need to let go of those. They’re not here to achieve my goals but to achieve their own.
Is there anything that you dislike about being a father?
Inconsolable infant crying. Some of the most difficult times in my life were the nights my infant children would cry all night and none of us slept, and then I had to go lecture the next day.
Negotiation. There is a lot of negotiation involved. Anytime that my wife and I tell the kids they have to do something they come back and say, “How about if I do this instead?”
Like so many parents, I also dislike struggling with my children over limiting screen time.
Interview and design by Carol Clark.
Following are excerpts from the book.
One weekend a few years ago when my daughter was two years old, we were at a public fair. She and I were sitting together in the grass playing. There was a man nearby making delectable-looking beignets. He kept looking over at us and smiling, and I could tell he thought Mia was cute. Eventually he came over and gave her a beignet. I thought that was super nice, but it also occurred to me that he did not offer me one. Maybe I didn't look as if I needed one. But I think Mia got one because of her cuteness. After he left, I said, ‘Great job, Mia. You just got about 100 calories from an unrelated stranger for free!’ I couldn't help but think that maybe that ability allowed one of our distant ancestors in Paleolithic times to scrounge up enough calories to survive childhood and continue our lineage.
Both maternal and paternal behavior appear to depend on a global parental caregiving system [in the brain].
The prefrontal cortex helps parents keep their negative emotions, such as frustration and anxiety, in check so they can be better parents.
Recent studies suggest that, similar to other animal species, when men become fathers they experience changes in their brain that may be preparing them for fatherhood.
I remember one of the first times that my wife went out of town and left me alone with my son for a weekend. He was a toddler and had just started running. No more than fifteen minutes after she left, he and I were running down the street together. It was cold so I said, "Let's run with our hands in our pockets." That seemed like a responsible paternal suggestion. However, no sooner did Toby put his hands in his pockets than he tripped over a rock and face-planted on the pavement. He started crying, and blood was coming out of his mouth. I thought, "Oh my god! I'm going to have to take him to the hospital and Barbara is never going to feel like it's safe to leave him home with me alone, and she's probably right anyway. Look what has happened!" Thankfully, everything resolved without need for medical intervention, we had a nice weekend together, and I even gained a modicum of parental confidence.
Some recommendations from the book for policies aimed at increasing positive parental involvement.
Provide paid paternal leave. Fathers will be more likely to take it when their income is fully replaced and when corporations encourage leave taking and assure men there will not be negative career consequences.
Consider reducing or eliminating prison sentences for nonviolent, drug-offending fathers who demonstrate a commitment to raising their children.
Avoid war. Societies at war tend to have distant fathers and many children lose their fathers in battle.
Provide education at many different levels, a crucial recommendation. We can start by educating boys and young men about the importance of fathers for child development. This should be done in high school before boys are likely to become fathers.
What is unique about your research?
I’m interested in trying to understand the hormonal and neurobiological changes that men experience when they become fathers, and how those changes may relate to whether men are more, or less, involved with their children. There are not many labs investigating that. The goal is to find ways to support fathers and to help improve the quality of caregiving that they deliver.
Paternal care is not obligate in the human species. The potential is there but it is not always realized. There is a lot of variation among fathers in terms of how involved they are with their children. And yet, we know that children who are raised by more positively engaged fathers tend to have better outcomes socially, behaviorally and, also, academically.
That doesn’t mean that a child cannot do well without an engaged father, only that the odds improve.
What are some of the more surprising findings on the biology of fathers?
The idea that, analogous to women, men experience biological changes that prepare them for their role as caregivers.
For example, for a long time people thought oxytocin was just a maternal hormone involved in mother-infant bonding. Emerging evidence suggests that it also promotes father-infant bonding.
Fathers with more oxytocin in their blood stimulate their infants more through activities like bouncing them up and down or poking them playfully to get their attention.
When fathers have more skin-to-skin contact with infants that actually increases the fathers’ oxytocin levels. Studies have also found that after fathers are given oxytocin in a nasal spray they interact and play with their infants more.
How can society better support more positive engagement of fathers?
More women have entered the workforce and many new parents live far away from extended family members. And yet, the U.S. is the only high-income country whose government does not provide any paid maternity leave. We are a massive outlier in this area.
The U.S. government also does not offer paid paternity leave, unlike 47 other high-income countries around the world.
Paternity leave gives fathers more of an opportunity to forge a bond with an infant and to develop confidence as a parent. A lot of evidence shows that fathers who take paternity leave tend to continue being more involved fathers.
What part of writing the book did you enjoy the most?
It was fun researching and writing about parental caregiving in different species. The female velvet spider, for example, regurgitates her intestines to feed her young and then the babies also end up eating her. It’s crazy.
A remarkable example of paternal caregiving is the Emperor penguin. The dads incubate the eggs by forming these giant huddles in the Arctic during the winter when it’s minus 40 degrees. They do that for months while the mothers are off at sea. They can’t eat anything while incubating an egg so they lose a lot of their body weight.
Male titi monkeys are devoted fathers, carrying their infants on their backs almost constantly. (Getty Images)
Male titi monkeys are devoted fathers, carrying their infants on their backs almost constantly. (Getty Images)
Only about five percent of males in mammalian species are involved in raising their offspring. Titi monkeys of South America are especially interesting. The males carry their infants on their backs through the forest and only give them back to the mothers to nurse. As a result, the infants form stronger attachments to their fathers than to their mothers.
The lack of paternal care among our closest living primate relatives [chimpanzees and gorillas] suggests that it newly evolved during human evolution. Because human males have likely been provisioning their offspring throughout human evolution, paternal caregiving likely played an important role in allowing our large-brained species to multiply rapidly and spread across the globe.
What distinguishes human fathers as direct caregivers?
Fathers, mothers and other caregivers have overlapping roles. There are few roles that fathers play that cannot be played by others.
However, fathers often gravitate toward a couple of important roles. One is introducing a child to the world outside of the home and supervising their exploration of that world. They help kids understand that the novelty and unpredictability that they encounter is not always something they need to be afraid of but can be an opportunity for growth.
Fathers also seem to be very important in helping children learn to regulate emotions of anger and frustration and to correctly read the emotions of others. Many dads, for example, engage in rough-and-tumble play which helps children learn to empathize and interact more skillfully with others. If you’re having fun and want to keep playing you need to make sure your playmate is also having fun and isn’t getting upset.
How did your own parents influence you as a father?
My father and mother are both wonderful. My decision to become a father was largely due to all the great memories I have from my family life growing up. I wanted to try to recreate that.
As I’m parenting my children, I’m also aware that I’m influencing the way that they’re going to parent my grandchildren.
Do you have any advice for men who don’t have a positive father role model?
The basic, most important thing is to be warm and responsive to your child but also to set and to enforce appropriate limits. It’s called authoritative parenting. A lot of studies show that this style of parenting is tied to positive outcomes.
On a personal level, what are some of your biggest challenges as a father?
The most painful part of being a parent for me is when one of my children experiences a failure or feels socially excluded. I would give anything to take that pain for them. Having to watch your child experience those things is difficult.
Probably one of my biggest flaws as a father is sometimes having aspirations for them that they don’t share. I’ve learned that I need to let go of those. They’re not here to achieve my goals but to achieve their own.
Is there anything that you dislike about being a father?
Inconsolable infant crying. Some of the most difficult times in my life were the nights my infant children would cry all night and none of us slept, and then I had to go lecture the next day.
Negotiation. There is a lot of negotiation involved. Anytime that my wife and I tell the kids they have to do something they come back and say, “How about if I do this instead?”
Like so many parents, I also dislike struggling with my children over limiting screen time.
Interview and design by Carol Clark.
Following are excepts from the book.
One weekend a few years ago when my daughter was two years old, we were at a public fair. She and I were sitting together in the grass playing. There was a man nearby making delectable-looking beignets. He kept looking over at us and smiling, and I could tell he thought Mia was cute. Eventually he came over and gave her a beignet. I thought that was super nice, but it also occurred to me that he did not offer me one. Maybe I didn't look as if I needed one. But I think Mia got one because of her cuteness. After he left, I said, ‘Great job, Mia. You just got about 100 calories from an unrelated stranger for free!’ I couldn't help but think that maybe that ability allowed one of our distant ancestors in Paleolithic times to scrounge up enough calories to survive childhood and continue our lineage.
Both maternal and paternal behavior appear to depend on a global parental caregiving system [in the brain].
The prefrontal cortex helps parents keep their negative emotions, such as frustration and anxiety, in check so they can be better parents.
Recent studies suggest that, similar to other animal species, when men become fathers they experience changes in their brain that may be preparing them for fatherhood.
I remember one of the first times that my wife went out of town and left me alone with my son for a weekend. He was a toddler and had just started running. No more than fifteen minutes after she left, he and I were running down the street together. It was cold so I said, "Let's run with our hands in our pockets." That seemed like a responsible paternal suggestion. However, no sooner did Toby put his hands in his pockets than he tripped over a rock and face-planted on the pavement. He started crying, and blood was coming out of his mouth. I thought, "Oh my god! I'm going to have to take him to the hospital and Barbara is never going to feel like it's safe to leave him home with me alone, and she's probably right anyway. Look what has happened!" Thankfully, everything resolved without need for medical intervention, we had a nice weekend together, and I even gained a modicum of parental confidence.
Some recommendations from the book for policies aimed at increasing positive parental involvement.
Provide paid paternal leave. Fathers will be more likely to take it when their income is fully replaced and when corporations encourage leave taking and assure men there will not be negative career consequences.
Consider reducing or eliminating prison sentences for nonviolent, drug-offending fathers who demonstrate a commitment to raising their children.
Avoid war. Societies at war tend to have distant fathers and many children lose their fathers in battle.
Provide education at many different levels, a crucial recommendation. We can start by educating boys and young men about the importance of fathers for child development. This should be done in high school before boys are likely to become fathers.
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